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Screenlight: Will Accounting Woes at Avid Spark Big Changes or an Acquisition?
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[Chris Kenny] “Ask the user to import the footage into the app.”
So post software should be built and judged entirely on how easy it is for someone with no experience with them to import footage, without any training? Seems silly. How easy is it to get footage in Resolve for someone with no experience? Or Smoke? Or Speedgrade? Do we completely disregard the reasons why an NLE prefers/requires a specific media structure simply because someone hasn’t learned why?
[Chris Kenny] “In Media Composer, you have to go create a /Avid MediaFiles/MXF folder, then create a numbered folder within it (numbers only, please!), then quit Media Composer, place your media in that folder, re-launch Media Composer, access the Media Tool, check all the correct boxes (which is a little confusing in its own right), and then drag the clips from the resulting window to your bin. This is completely undiscoverable, and, frankly, crazy. And it’s not an isolated example.”
There’s a reason for Avid’s media structure, and easier ways to get MXF media populated in a bin – your method is not necessarily the best or fastest. Besides, once you show and explain to a person why it’s done a certain way they understand it and it’s no longer a hurdle. At all. And in return for a short explanation and a bit of understand they get Avid’s legendary media management. Seems a fair trade.
Plus, if you gave ProRes files to everyone the Avid user could drag them over just like Premiere or FCPX and Avid would import them (not instanteous like X or Premiere, but the end result is the same). Or they could AMA them and get direct access. Of course, that might require them to read a manual (heaven forbid).
[Chris Kenny] “But if you’re a new user who learns software mostly by exploring it — which is how most people seem to prefer to learn software — Media Composer is very nearly impenetrable gibberish.”
Most people prefer to learn software by just exploring it, without any training or explanation or reading of the manual? People who are buying the software to make money with, as part of their job? I don’t buy it. And even they do, then why does Bill Davis keep telling people you need to watch training videos to really come to understand the how and why of FCPX and that it will take you 6 months to “get it” and really understand it? He’s a huge proponent of X and even he recommends training.
Are there things Avid could improve on, including interface tweaks? Absolutely. But to say it’s oudated is kind of silly. You’re not even a day-in day-out editor, Chris. Maybe the interface wasn’t designed for you?
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[Steve Connor] “Also Drivel”
See. You just can’t see it, Steve.
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[Chris Harlan] “See. You just can’t see it, Steve.
“Yes I can, it’s just that I prefer frolicking Unicorns to an interface that looks like I’ve just booted up my old Power Mac in OS9!
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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[Craig Seeman] “This short commentary from Richard Harrington who many of us know for his Photoshop tutorials here and elsewhere. More of an outline with links to articles.”
Oh yes, I see, a guy who’s been an Apple trainer and who now writes training books for Adobe products is predicting the end of Avid – and we are all supposed to surprised and/or impressed?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Steve Connor] “Yes I can, it’s just that I prefer frolicking Unicorns to an interface that looks like I’ve just booted up my old Power Mac in OS9!
“LOL! Now you know you guys are a bunch of bronies, right?
https://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/06/bronies-my-little-ponys/
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[Chris Harlan] “https://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/06/bronies-my-little-ponys/”
Bizarre!
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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[Michael Hancock] “So post software should be built and judged entirely on how easy it is for someone with no experience with them to import footage, without any training? Seems silly.”
Seems like something I didn’t say.
I specifically argued that this was a problem for Media Composer with respect to attracting new users and expanding into additional markets. Not that post software should be judged entirely on the basis of walk-up usability.
[Michael Hancock] “Seems silly. How easy is it to get footage in Resolve for someone with no experience? Or Smoke? Or Speedgrade?”
I don’t use Speedgrade or Smoke, but I have found Resolve to be vastly less impenetrable, in the way I’m discussing here, than Media Composer. In fact, it’s hard to think of other examples of software as bad as Media Composer in this respect. 3D modeling apps, maybe. But they’re all like that. MC’s problem is that its major competition isn’t like that.
[Michael Hancock] “Do we completely disregard the reasons why an NLE prefers/requires a specific media structure simply because someone hasn’t learned why?”
Frankly, yes, we should disregard that when evaluating UI. “The internal structure of our app requires us to do this crazy, unintuitive thing” is not really an excuse, if there are other ways things could be structured that wouldn’t require that.
But this is exactly the sort of thing we expect when dealing with an app that has been around as long as Media Composer has. Really, think this through. When Media Composer was new, file-based workflow was effectively unheard of. Odds are your media files were being captured from tape directly into MC, so it worried about where to put them, and file-based importing was a special case, not a basic task, so handling it with a quirky workflow and a special tool was fine. Since then, file-based workflows, including workflows involving native camera media, have become common. So in addition to the system that was created for the tape-based era, Avid has grafted a whole separate system onto MC in the form of AMA, which references and works with media files in a completely different way.
I want the long-time Avid users to really think about this, as if for the first time. Media Composer has two completely different paradigms for working with media, depending on what format it’s in. Would you design an NLE like that if you were designing it from the ground up today? Not a chance. It’s purely an artifact of new capabilities being grafted onto a legacy architecture.
[Michael Hancock] “Are there things Avid could improve on, including interface tweaks? Absolutely. But to say it’s oudated is kind of silly. You’re not even a day-in day-out editor, Chris. Maybe the interface wasn’t designed for you?”
I’m not a day-in-day-out creative editor. I do quite a bit of online edit and conform work, including prepping projects in offline NLE environments. I also design and specify entire end-to-end workflows, from dailies, though offline, online and deliverables. I suspect a lot of creative editors who don’t see what’s wrong with MC may be focusing almost exclusively on a narrow set of core editing functions, and ignoring the fact that the whole structure around them has become a creaking relic.
The kinds of things we’re talking about here will not be fixed by ‘tweaks’. It’s worth noting that MC is the oldest of the major NLE environments, and the only one that, as far as I know, has never had a ground-up rewrite. The points I’m making here are a fairly straightforward, expected consequence of this fact.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “Ask the user to import the footage into the app.”
What about right-clicking in a bin and choosing import?
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[Chris Kenny] “It works, frankly, like an app from a couple of decades ago that has had a huge number of features grafted onto it — because that’s exactly what it is. There are signs of this all over the place in, say, Photoshop as well, but Media Composer is by far the worst offender among apps I come into regular contact with in this industry.”
As a non Avid user who is now seriously considering switching over I will say that I agree with Chris on several counts.
1) The actual screens and fonts look dated and tacky.
2) There are elements of the timeline that seem dated – the limit on audio tracks for example.
3) the media organization seems very complicated and restricted.Having said all that I would like to go on and say that:
as to #1 – What professional would give a sh*t.
as to #2 – They can / should fix it.
as to #3 – It’s worth learning for the excellent results. Sometimes restrictions are good for you.[Chris Kenny] “Sit a new user down with Media Composer, FCP X, and Premiere. In each app, have a project/event already created and named appropriately. Give the user a folder full of video clips in whatever format is preferred by the NLE. So that would be DNxHD MXF files for Media Composer, ProRes MOV files for FCP X, and, well, Adobe doesn’t have an equvilant codec, but let’s just say ProRes MOV files there as well, which should work fine. Ask the user to import the footage into the app.”
I could suggest another example.
Have an editor import several scenes from tape, over time code jumps. Have him sync the takes to a script for easy indexing. Have him export the show to tape.
Now compare other NLE’s to Avid.
[Chris Kenny] “But if you’re a new user who learns software mostly by exploring it — which is how most people seem to prefer to learn software — Media Composer is very nearly impenetrable gibberish.”
The definition of an overly limited NLE would be one that a user could figure out without a manual or training. If it’s possible to do, then it’s not worth the trouble using.
As has been said before, “Of course it’s hard, its the hard that makes it worth doing.”
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
Even if it’s just vultures circling just as the law firms are doing, the very phenomena of circling vultures is interesting. They all do smell blood though. Avid is very much wounded. Some are emboldened by that, right or wrong.
Personally I think part of the problem is that Avid really is in a muddy area between selling software (which isn’t all that profitable to them) and selling hardware (which they aren’t selling enough of to make a profit). This is making them a target from all sides and some are openly shooting at the target.
Realistically everyone in this business has some financial stake including end users who make money using these products.
Maybe you can only point to those who are full time journalists as without motive.
… and maybe there’s a reason why EditShare starts an industry news outlet…
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